


Baby, baby

by zjofierose



Series: Zjo's zine fics [1]
Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Adoption, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Grief/Mourning, M/M, Moving On, Parenthood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-02
Updated: 2019-10-02
Packaged: 2020-11-15 01:02:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20857637
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zjofierose/pseuds/zjofierose
Summary: Keith and Shiro decide to adopt a child.





	Baby, baby

**Author's Note:**

> My fic for the Intertwined Zine! 
> 
> PLEASE NOTE: this fic contains descriptions of the loss of a child through failed adoption - there's no death, but it's very much a loss, and grieved as such by the characters. If this is going to be upsetting to you, please do not read further!

“Uh-huh,” Shiro murmurs from the other room, and Keith wants to put his fist through a wall. “Yes, we understand. No, of course. It’s a big decision.”

Shiro stands statue-still at the far end of the kitchen, his bare back to Keith where he waits at the end of the hallway. They’d known this was coming, could sense it like a storm on the breeze, but the reality of it makes Keith’s teeth clench and stomach turn.

“Right. Well, please tell her we’re very sorry, but we respect her decision.” There’s the tiniest of hitches in Shiro’s voice, and Keith heads down to the small room at the end of the hallway. It’s dark, but the curtains are open and the light from the streetlamp shines in through the window, illuminating the small shapes of a crib, a changing table, a rocking chair. 

He pulls the door shut. He doesn’t want Shiro to see it.

“Yes, do let us know if anything changes. Thank you.” A pause, followed by a click of the phone to the table, and then the deafening silence of their world falling apart echoes in. 

Keith goes to their room and waits. He can’t do this in the public spaces; even in their own house, he doesn’t want to be sitting on the couch in six months and think, “this is where I was when my husband told me we’d lost our child.”

He curls up instead in their bed, stripping himself efficiently before he lies down on top of the covers, the night air too warm and close for blankets. It’s several minutes before he hears Shiro begin moving, the sounds of him taking refuge in routine seeming louder than possible. Water runs in the bathroom as Shiro brushes his teeth, his normally quiet footsteps rattling across the wooden floor of the hallway as his silhouette fills the doorframe.

“She changed her mind,” Keith states, lets it fall like gravity between them. Shiro freezes for one heartbeat, two, then moves into the room, stepping out of his sweatpants and coming to sit on the edge of the bed. 

“Yeah,” Shiro says, and Keith reaches out to him, dragging him down backward onto the mattress and wrapping them together, arms and legs and chests pressed close. “Yeah, baby, she did,” Shiro tells him, clutching him so tight it hurts. Keith holds him fiercely back as Shiro sobs, as his own tears run silently down his face and into the sheets.

They cry for a long time.

\--

“I can’t be angry with her,” Shiro says with a sigh hours later. “I just wish she’d decided sooner.”

“I can,” Keith mutters, but even he can hear that the bitterness of his tone is subsumed into grief. 

“Oh, baby,” Shiro strokes his cheek, tugging gently on a piece of hair that’s fallen into Keith’s eyes. “I’m so sorry. I know you wanted this.”

Keith scowls. “You wanted it, too, Shiro. Don’t be noble with me.” His words are sharp, but his hands on Shiro’s body are soft, loving. “Don’t sell it short. We were going to do this together. We wanted this  _ together _ .”

“Yeah,” Shiro sighs, and his eyes glimmer in the dim light. “You’re right. I’m sorry. I just want to protect you.”

Keith shoves Shiro over onto his back and climbs on top of him, stretching out until he’s a perfect mirror of Shiro’s body, arm on arm, leg on leg, chest on chest. He hooks his chin over Shiro’s shoulder, shoves his face into Shiro’s neck. 

“You can’t protect me from grief, Shiro. We,” he pauses, forces his tongue around the words. “We lost our child. Maybe not in the usual way, but. We wanted him, we planned for him. We waited for him. And we lost him.” He draws in a shuddering breath, lets Shiro’s fingers intertwine with his own. “That hurts. It’s  _ supposed  _ to hurt. You can’t keep that from me.”

“No,” Shiro’s voice is hushed in the darkened room. “No, I can’t. But I wish I could.”

“I know,” Keith says, and stretches up to press a kiss to Shiro’s cheek. “I know.”

\--

They don’t really talk about it for the next three days, but the fourth day was supposed to begin their paternity leave. Keith feels cowardly for letting Shiro handle the details with the Garrison, and cooks a generous breakfast in apology.

“Sam says we should take this week as bereavement,” Shiro says, pushing eggs around on his plate, and Keith sets his toast down, his appetite suddenly gone. “He says just canceling our leave and working through it is denial, and isn’t healthy.”

Keith hums in agreement. Sam’s right, of course, but there’s little Keith wants more right now than the distraction of work. Something in which he can subsume himself until his feelings are gone, until he can ignore the gaping emptiness in their calendar, the silent room at the end of the hall. 

He owes it to Shiro to at least make an effort, though, so he nods and takes a bite. “Let’s go on vacation.”

“Where?” Shiro asks, and Keith shrugs. 

“I can message mom, see what she’s up to? We could go visit the Blades for a week or two.”

Shiro doesn’t quite smile, but Keith can see the hint of interest in his eyes. There is no vacation with the Blades; they will be put to work training and analyzing and strategizing, but also there will be no children, and absolutely no one will ask them how they feel.

“Yeah, okay.” Shiro says, picking up a piece of toast. Shiro always was better at playing normal than Keith. He settles his hand over Keith’s own and squeezes. “Let’s do it.”

\--

Twenty-four hours later they’re in a ship heading for the Marmoran base, and it’s almost like a bad dream. If he didn’t keep catching Shiro out of the corner of his eye looking gutted, Keith could almost believe they’d never talked to the agency at all, that they’d never had to certify in CPR and baby-proof the house, that they’d never met Angie, never felt the kick of their son under their hands. 

The Blades wear them out through honest hard work, and Keith is grateful. He spends two hours with his mom when they get there of which he will never speak again, and he knows she goes straight to Shiro afterward. He’s grateful for this, too, that he has a parent who can empathize with his loss, and who loves his partner as much as she loves him. It’s a gift, and he knows it.

Focusing on drills and intelligence allows him to work through his feelings in the back of his mind. Anger is first and most obvious, and he knows himself well enough to know it will be the last to fade. He’s not as noble as Shiro, he  _ is  _ angry: with Angie for changing her mind, with the statutes that allow it up until the last minute and beyond, with himself for being so hurt, and even angrier that he allowed Shiro to be hurt, too. There’s guilt, also — what they’re experiencing is so much less than someone who has held their baby, watched it grow. How can they even truly say they’ve lost a child? Their son was never truly theirs to begin with, not according to flesh or the law.

“He was ours in our hearts,” Shiro murmurs into his hair when Keith finally speaks the words aloud. “And he always will be. They can’t change that.”

Keith just nods. 

Perhaps the hardest is the resignation, because it’s suffocatingly familiar. He pushes through the knowledge that he will be alone, of course he will; how could he ever question that? He doesn’t deserve to have a family, to share the bonds of love with other humans. He’s known that since he was eight years old in too-small shoes standing in his driveway and waiting to be taken away. Fifteen years of unwavering love and support go a long way toward healing old wounds, but the patterns of thought and feeling formed when he was young are not easily dismissed, and Keith has to work to reach out, work to connect, work to believe that this is not the beginning of the end of good things in his life.

\--

It’s a hard week, but good, leaving them physically and emotionally exhausted, but somewhat more at ease. The house is bright when they land, lights on in the main rooms and a fresh-baked loaf of banana bread on the kitchen table. 

_ Welcome back _ , the note under it reads,  _ we all love you so much. - the Holts et al. _

They shower lingeringly, their bathroom at home both larger and less public than any of the Blade facilities, taking the time to reacquaint themselves with mod-cons and each other, and then tumble into bed to sleep the sleep of the dead. They rise the next morning and return to work, and the days pass just as before.

\--

Four months come and go before Shiro’s birthday. They’re not easy ones: Keith has to hide the small stuffed hippo he’d pre-bought as a Christmas present because he can’t bear the thought of explaining it to Shiro. They have to make an effort to be social at the winter festivities, when they’d both rather be alone in their little house. But January comes, and then February, and while they have done a very good job of being adults and using their words about what happened, they have not yet talked about where they go from here. 

It’s not a “real” birthday year for Shiro, but Keith always gets him a gift regardless, and they stay up until midnight on the twenty-eighth so he can blow out a candle, make a wish, and open his present as February ticks over into March. 

His candle this year is gold, the small cake is red velvet, and Shiro’s smile as he blows it out and takes a bite is soft, but real in a way that makes Keith’s heart grow full.

“Happy Birthday, Shiro,” Keith says, reveling as he always does at the good fortune that allows him to say these words to a man he’s lost more times than he can count, whom he loves more than life itself. “I love you.” He pushes a wrapped box across the table.

“I love you, too,” Shiro says, and leans in to kiss him before settling back in his chair to dig into the wrapping paper. He shreds through the outer layer and opens the lid of the smallish square box to draw out a plain-looking white mug, clutching it by the handle as he tips it to read the black printed letters.

“Keith,” Shiro says, his voice strangled and his face tight, grip so hard around the handle Keith’s slightly afraid it’s going to break clean off. “Do you mean it?”

He doesn’t turn the mug to display the text, but Keith doesn’t need to see the blocky  **#1 Dad** to understand the question. He stands, letting Shiro set the mug down and open his arms, then walks into them, pulling Shiro’s head to his chest and cradling it in his hands as he nods against Shiro’s hair and smiles.

“I mean it,” he says, voice steady. “Happy birthday, Shiro. Let’s try again."

  
  



End file.
